Shifted My Blog!

Hello!
I have shifted my blog to inquickpursuit.wordpress.com.
Wordpress is so much better!
See you there!
Ravi

Hush...the Net has ears...

An employee fired for calling her job boring. A cop losing a case as he made claims that ran counter to what he had stated in court. Multiple instances of college pics and party photos resulting in candidates loosing interview calls.

They probably deserved it is the general feeling. Except in the above cases, the revelations about the people involved all happened online on social networking sites. They were not overheard or caught in real life. The mentioned people incriminated themselves. Somebody investigated their wall postings and public album collections.

We Homo-sapiens are social creatures. We know how to sweet talk some one discreetly. Spread rumors and appear professional when some one asks us where we see our selves five years from now. We can handle peers and pressure because of two factors. Nature and Nurture. I.e. we have brought up to pick up behavioral cues about people around us or the skills are inborn. Many generations of nurture training fail us when online behavior is considered. We are not able to perceive how far our party picture will go; Our own sphere of influence. In the offline world we would choose to show it to say 7 close friends who we can trust because we directly interact with them. Also the photos are still physically with you.

In the online world. The ability to multiply infinitely the photos causes serious issues. Plus let’s say you trust seven similar people with the photos. Even if one of those seven fail in discretion, you now have the equivalent of infinite photos on the net. Imagine the shock of employees who were fired because their boss found some college snap “not consistent with the corporate philosophy”.

The boss was not on the friends list but still found out. We would continue to see this trend in the future because how counter intuitive the online world really is. Let’s say you want to tell your friend you have a boring job. You would generally check the surroundings, lower your voice and tell him if you trust him. Even if this friend betrays you, we can possibly deny totally what we are accused of. In the Online world, it’s hard to keep track of who is watching you. We forget who is on our friends list and often they might be people we have fallen out with. People generate hundreds of photos every year and it is difficult to keep track of whom you are sharing it with. The internet is simply not intuitive. And the worst part about the internet is that there is always proof left behind. Your not-too- honorable friend we just spoke about now has a screenshot to prove his case.

The non intuitive characteristic of the net also cost many cheerleaders and teachers their jobs in the United States when they were found in what is called "pictures not reflecting expected behavior standards". Ten years back the person involved may have carried on with whatever they were accused of silently. But now it’s broadcast on the net and all it takes is one leak. One person or computer or account to be compromised and often carriers go down. Similarly every tweet, bog post and email is now a permanent record that can be used in mind numbing number of ways to slander people.

It would not be surprising if self censorship steps in soon on a large scale. We might have to worry like celebrities about what we say, had said or dressed like might be used against us somewhere anytime in the future.

Awesome Free Google Service for India

Google has launched Voice Search for select Indian cities and its awesome!

• Say you want to find out the phone number of a restaurant, maybe Corner House.
• You have to call up 1-800-41-999-999 and you have to say "Corner House" after the Beep.
• The voice recognition system takes what seems like 3 seconds to understand what you said and then repeats the query.
• Then it asks for area,i assume if multiple locations are found, and again the system takes 3 seconds.
• The system then sends you an sms and also reads out the results.

I tested the system for Hotel empire, Chinmaya Mission Hospital, Vidyarthi Bhavan and for Movie timings at INOX and they were all spot on.
Though for Hotel Empire I got the address and phone number but for others I only got the contact number.

And the best part is that its FREE! It is a toll free number you call. I have often ended up in MG road or Brigade road and have walked around looking for a newspaper to check movie timings.Now I guess that situation wont happen again.

Here is the official site with more details.
Google's aim is to organise the world'ss information. Good work so far!

Google screws up, Again!

Google seems to be loosing it slowly. First, they marked the entire Internet as spam. Then the great GMail outage happened, and the latest, your private documents in google docs could have been shared and exposed to other people.

Even though this happened to less than " .05% of documents" its a huge setback to Google.I really don't want people to find out my collection of email forwards and 18th century poetry.This is enough to scare me off the Internet cloud promise; Which is supposed to be google's weapon to finish off Microsoft.

When Bill Gates came to India, Pranoy Roy interviewed him. Gates was asked about FireFox and how it was eating into IE's market share. Gates said this " Every few years we hear about a company that's going to finish off Microsoft, and we say the same thing, Not yet!".

Another Indian Election

This summer, in a poling booth near you watch the biggest democratic drama in the world.

These are the things I remember from the last elections.

1. Large number of Film/ TV stars joining parties at will. It was a really funny spectacle, watching stars and wannabe's lining up.
2. Nobody expected the BJP to loose. It was taken for granted they would walk away with a comfortable win.
3. Sonia Gandhi was expected to loose hands down.
4." The left? Who’s that?" was the attitude of news anchors.
5. It was supposed to be the first "presidential" style election in India. Putting Sonia Gandhi vs. Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Guess is was also the last.

So many sure shot predictions were broken last time. Let’s see how this year’s predictions go.

I will be following some blogs and columnists this time to understand the election. The most important one of them all will be Swapan Dasgupta at the Daily pioneer. His analysis is simple, straight and very funny most of the times.

MK Akbar seems to be a good new find . Not read enough of his columns yet.

Sigh...

Lyrics from the musical Mary Poppins :

A man has dreams of walking with giants
To carve his niche in the edifice of time
Before the mortar of his zeal
Has a chance to congeal
The cup is dashed from his lips
The flame is snuffed aborning
He's brought to rack and ruin in his prime

Informed Comment

There are some blogs out there thatreally amaze me. The most impressive one I have recently stumbled upon is Informed Comment written by Juan Cole.When the Israeli army invaded Gaze I barely understood what was happening.

While most news channels choose to just report events during the invasion, I was a bit confused by coverage in the international media including the NYT and The Guardian.Most of these papers organized their coverage around the impact of this event on the other big event. Obama's swearing in.

Then I stumbled on this blog and was quite amazed at the length the author goes to analyse news from a variety of sources and his ability to make reading it relatively simple. And this is the middle east! Its quite complex and he really does help me understand the situation better.
He also vovers Islamic issues and studies. His clarity ensures I can just look up his posts and understand what's happening in that part of the world.

My article in Citizen Matters

I actually published something! The people at Citizen Matters declare themselves as " a Bangalore focused and citizen-oriented news publication". Well it feels warm and fuzzy to see your words in print...er...pixels.

Here is my article on how i remember Defense colony.

Shame on Barkha Dutt

Barkha Dutt is doing to this blogger what bullies do to little kids.
This link sums up the events well.

http://retributions.nationalinterest.in/ndtvs-assault-on-free-speech/

English classes in school

The short story is my favorite type of lit. I've always enjoyed my English classes in school. Except for the weird poems that sounded nothing like the official interpretation provided by the teacher. I remember the lily and the oak.

The Noble Nature
Ben Jonson (1573–1637)

IT is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of Light
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Most of us students were not convinced by my teacher's interpretation that the beauty of the lily was better. we thought the oak was doing an unglamorous job as a tree very well!

Preity Zinta!

I subscribe to Wikipedia article of the day. I received the most diverse set of articles and they are really fascinating. Here are some...

• LaRouche criminal trials.
• United Nations Parliamentary assembly.
• The Equipartition theorem.
• Elaine Paige.
• yttrium.
• Amateur radio in India.
• Pulmonary Contusion.
• Komodo Dragons.
• Delhi.
• Metallica.
• Phan Xich Long.
• Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany etc...
  

Yesterday's article though was a knowledge packed one on..........................Preity Zinta!

Here's the article.

I can barely imagine a reader in Greenland and another in Peru reading this informative piece!

Wikipedia needs our help!

Wikipedia, am ambitious project to catalog all human knowledge is one of the six top sites in the world. It needs help. The Wikipedia foundation is a non profit foundation that has consistently resisted putting advertisements on its sites. It relies on voluntary donations by its users.

It has an impressive 11 million articles in 265 languages. More than 275 million people visit the site every month to access information, free of charge and free of advertising.Its a treasure trove and i love the featured article mailing list which sends me the "article of the day".Very fascinating stuff.

Its time to give back a little. Click here to donate.

Face it!

Sweet new feature in Picasa( Google's pic manager). It now allows you to tag people and it attempts to recognize faces in pictures using face recognition technology!The feature was available for American users only until now. It 's a bit inaccurate. Or that's how technology and I've been watching too many unrealistic spy thrillers!

Arun Shourie's speech

Arun Shourie's speech in the Rajya Sabha on the Mumbai attack, via offstumped.

The point is that not only, Sir, is the finger of suspicion there, but your intelligence reports, I can say from my personal knowledge, because I have reproduced many of them, say, they record, that actually the ISI is now knitting together Indian insurgence extremist groups even in the North East.

Therefore, things are going to get much worse. So, Sir, what should be done, I will now just come to that and these are in a constructive spirit and I do hope that the Government especially the Prime Minister with his knowledge of what had happened in Punjab, he has the firsthand knowledge of what is happening in the
North East, which is a matter of great concern to him because he represents the North East in the House, and, I hope they will be taken in that spirit.

My first point, Sir, is, please stop running to ‘mummy’. This business of putting faith that somebody else will do our work for us, Nobody will do it for the reasons that I have already outlined to you in the case, for example, of America. The same is the case with China. China is the prop of Pakistan. They have a strategy, they say ‘murder with a borrowed knife’, find a natural enemy of your adversary, arm it, encourage it and it will do your job for it. This is what they have been doing on nuclear proliferation or any other matter.

Second point, Sir, is please stop this miscalled peace process because one of the very unfortunate statements that was agreed to by the Indian Government, in this case by the Prime Minister, was terrorists will not be allowed to come in way to derail the peace process. What did this mean — Pakistan then had both options, go on doing terrorist attacks and the onus of keeping the peace process going would remain on India. That is it. Shed this. You know there is always an argument that is made to us when Musharraf was strong, ‘no, no, he is there, he is strong, you have to make some concessions on Kashmir.” When he was weak, ‘no, no, he is your best bet, you must make some concessions to him, and you strengthen him.’ Now there is so-called democracy, you say, ‘Democracy, therefore, you must strengthen democracy, you must make concessions and you must keep the peace process going even as we are badgered everyday.

Sir, third, shed denial. I will tell you, every time in this House from November 2004 there was a debate on internal security, in December 2005, there was a debate and four days before this terrorist attack in Mumbai, the Home Minister was in total denial, “Fortunately, the number of incidents and casualties that have occurred…” Sir, this business is not UPA versus NDA. “Fortunately, the number of incidents and causalities that have occurred in the last fourand- a-half-years are much less than those that occurred in the four-anda- half-years before the present period.” It is BC versus AC, Before Christ versus After Christ.

What consolation is it?

Yet, the impression created is that terrorism has increased and has not reduced. Please contrast that with what has been said just now. “Even if one incident occurs and one person becomes a casualty it should cause us concern and should make us alert. However, it should not demoralise us and give a wrong impression to the uninformed sections of society.” Sir, what about the informed sections? So, shed denial.

The fourth point is, implement it. You have again read out a set of measures. One, on page 3, you have said Coastal command I will say this with complete sense of responsibility and this is what I quoted four years
ago. Now there is a plan to stage things from unoccupied islands. Now, Sir, in Lakshadweep, there are 36 islands. The Godbole Task Force set up in the wake of Kargil in 2000 reported that for all these 36 islands
Intelligence Operation is only on one island, Kavaratti. There, the entire Intelligence gathering is carried out by one inspector, one sub-inspector, one head constable, three constables. For all the other 35 islands,
Intelligence operations are carried out by one constable/head constable. So, after the Mumbai attacks, I contacted the senior most people in Intelligence. They said, Sir, all these people reported to a person called officer-in-charge in Kavaratti. They said it is still one inspector, one sub-inspector, one head constable, three constables, and one constable/head constable reporting now, not to an officer-in-charge but — because of the grace of Pay Commission — he is the same man now re-designated as Deputy Superintendent of Police and it was recorded then, that unidentified helicopters and turbo planes have been
landing in these islands. Are we serious? Now, you are saying that coast guard etc. will be put under this. The Coast Guard-Navy coordination is not good enough. The Coast Guard should be put under the control of the Navy and accountability fixed is a recommendation seven years back. Sir, my suggestion there is, please implement what you have now resolved to do. This business of setting up a Marine Police Force, as you have in the Andamans, for Lakshadweep this recommendation dates back from December, 1996. I am not mentioning UPA or NDA. You can say should we wait for assaults of this kind to be awakened to the things we have not implemented? So, I greatly compliment you, Sir, for the things you have now resolved to do on page 3 regarding the Coast Guard etc. but for heaven’s sake do them.

Fifthly, prepare for the next form of assault. We are always preparing for the last. In all of Chinese literature, which your National Security Adviser keeps referring, they said they have outmoded this kind
of operation. We must get to the acupuncture points of the other society through integrated networks. What are these? Air traffic control, Railway traffic control, power grids, banking transactions, broadcasting
facilities, all are to be done in two minutes through cyber warfare.

My good friend, Mr. Raja, is sitting here. I am very distressed to report to the hon. Prime Minister that the
initiatives that were started, in collaboration with our Defence Forces for setting up of fire walls on our infrastructure and by the Armed Forces for them, have not helped at all. We remain as vulnerable. I would be very happy to be wrong in this when Mr. Raja will assure us. But the fact of the matter is, those who are supplying such software and the work that was being done in the Ministry and the Defence Forces, I feel that country is as vulnerable to that kind of operation by terrorists and, please remember, how sophisticated they are. In this case, they use not just mobile phones, not just satellite phones and they use voice over Internet protocol. Why did they do it? Sir, because it is then difficult to locate the person I am calling. So, they are far ahead in technology. It is now being said that they use GPS. And, it is now established by the best intelligence sources in the world that within the coming five years terrorists will use non-conventional weapons. They use biological weapons, chemical weapons, sub-nuclear weapons in their miniature form, etc. So, please, instead of waiting for the next statement after one of those attacks, review our preparedness. It is my entreat to you,to the hon. Defence Minister, hon. Prime Minister and everybody, please review our preparedness today for those new forms of attacks which will definitely come.

Sir, the sixth one is: Please stop seeing these incidents, whether in Assam or anywhere else, as single discreet isolated incidents. They are part of a sequence for a war of attrition.

That is my seventh point. It is a war. The one strategic thinker in the Sub-Continent who has succeeded — only one –is Zia-Ul-Haq. He was the man, 35 years ago, who identified proxy war to bleed India and break India. He believed in death by thousand cuts. The fact of the matter is, for 35 years, he has kept India busy and bleeding and That is the success of their strategy. So, it is a war. It is a war to break India. These are not discreet isolated incidents.

Sir, the eighth point is: Please do not go by the Joint Statements that their leaders sign with you and with great satisfaction the Home Secretaries exchange with each other. By Mr. Zardari’s new statement, please look at the nature of Pakistani’ State and society. In the Pakistani State the pervasiveness of the ISI, the power of the Army depends only on hostility with India and with successes against India in
these operations. How will they give it up? As far as the society is concerned, Taliban is not the cause of what is happening. Taliban is the result of the Talibanisation of Pakistani society. I have had an occasion
to quote a comprehensive thick study by Pakistani academics of the Institute for Sustainable Development Policy in Islamabad on the instructions given and the textbooks used not only in Madrasas but in
Government schools of Pakistan. From Kindergarten when the child is just 5 or 6 years old the instructions from the Central School of Secondary Education and Primary School Education says that he shall be judged by the fervour with which he gives speeches on Jihad and Shahadat. This is a 200-page report. Please download it and read it. That is the society which you think that you can deflect it with your sweet words.

My point number 9 is that no war can be won with a strategy of permanent defence. You must make
those who control and orchestrate such a war to pay. If you cannot, make them pay individually. Then, you must make the country realise the cost of doing all this to India.

Ten, please realise — this is a point for the liberals also — whenever we are pushed into such a situation we say that but minimal force. But no war is won with minimal force. It is won by overwhelming the enemy. As it has happened in Mumbai now, and 200 commandos only from the NSG were sent, plus
reinforcement, plus naval commandos. That is the scale at which you have to overwhelm. You can’t do it with minimal force. That is why, Sir, when you look at this figure, Not an eye-for-an-eye, not a tooth-for-a-tooth. That is completely wrong. For an eye, both eyes! For a tooth, the whole jaw! Unless India has that
determination and that clarity, we will continue to bleed like this all the time.
Eleven, the time when large armies could be sent across the borders that time has gone. The time when large bodies of armies could be sent across the borders has gone. There are no training camps to bomb. But Pakistan gives us the clue what we should be doing to make them register a cause, that is, look at the violence in Kashmir in the last year-and-a-half that has gone down because Pakistan has been preoccupied in its own problems. So, keep it preoccupied in its own problems in Baluchistan, in Gilgit Baltistan, in PoK.

Then, Sir, my next point, point No. twelve, is shed all inhibitions for collaborating with armies and intelligence agencies of other countries that have expertise in these matters.
Thirteenth point is a very good point that has been made by the Home Minister just now that you are thinking of a National Investigative Agency and of amending and tightening the laws. The Prime Minister
also said this after the Mumbai blasts. I appeal to all sides that please do not make this a prestige issue because, on the one side, investigative agency it will be misused against us, in this way things that are desperately needed by the country will not get timed. I will tell you the way out. It is very good that the Government is thinking on these lines. But the way out is shown by a Congressman-headed commission’s report, that is, the Moily’s Report of Administrative Reforms Commission of June 2008. He has devoted an entire chapter, that is, chapter 4, on dealing with terrorism. It says that clearly there is a felt need to strengthen the hands of security forces in the fight against terror even as human rights and constitutional values are protected. It lists several provisions that are weak provisions, several judgements that are coming in the way. Friends, you will be shocked to learn, many friends there would have forgotten that in the case involving the assassination of no other person than Shri Rajiv Gandhi, the Supreme Court held that it could not be regarded as a terrorist act. And throughout that whole portion none of those provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act could be applied. There are pages and pages that are quoted.
“Terrorism and low intensity warfare have imposed new challenges on law enforcement that we are yet to accommodate even at the conceptual level.” The Report says this. Then, they give many details. “From these it is evident that most countries have been adopting tough anti-terrorism measures, whereas the provisions of similar laws have been diluted in India over a period of time.” “The existing penal laws in India were not enacted to deal with the situation, and, there is ample evidence to indicate that terrorists have been able to escape the law either by exploiting the loopholes in the ordinary law or by intimidating witnesses to subvert justice. There is, definitely, a need to have stringent provisions to deal with terrorists.” It goes on. Sir, it is really worth reading. And, again they have said this. but the changes that were made by the then Home Minister, Shri Shivraj Patil, in the Unlawful Activities Act, 2005 — have
proved to be toothless. And, this is said by the Administrative Reforms Commission also. So, they reviewed all the provisions and they suggested changes. then, it will make sense. And, we will appeal to all States also not to get frightened. So, a thing which is necessary for the country should not be delayed. Please do
these things together. My friend, Shri Arun Jaitley, was just telling me this. But do you know that under the existing laws his confessional statement is not admissible as evidence in the court of law? You can’t then link it with Pakistan. And, that provision was there, but that is why, that was effective.

MCOCA is not in use. That is the next point. But, the law also would not exist because you are not approving it. “What is the use of having a paper soap?”

The next point is, after you pass these laws, after you set up these agencies, please use them. All this is very necessary. Sir, I am heading towards the conclusion.

The next point is this. Actually speaking, terrorism cannot be fought by NSGs and so on. actually, terrorism is fought by the first responder. The Prime Minister said the other day — I remember his statement; it is an odd word to be used, but he said — we cannot fight it unless the constable is brought in the vortex of our counter-terrorism strategy. Constables deficiency above 20 per cent in the IPS officers. Constables Just see the technology these people used and the training that we are giving to the persons who are to fight them. Please remember that IB also consists of these very fellows. What is their training? Their qualification has now been reduced to eighth class. They are barely literate and they are going to meet high technology challenges! What facilities are they given? About 20 per cent of the police constables in Delhi have not been given family accommodation and are living in illegal slums. And we want them to be motivated to fight terrorism! We want to bring them in the vortex of our counter- terrorism strategy. So, you cannot have first-class antiterrorist operations without first-class policing; you cannot have firstclass policing in metropolitan areas without first-class policing in the hinterland; and you cannot have first-class policing in the coastal areas unless the Bangladesh borders open. So, it has to be a comprehensive solution and at all levels. You cannot have first-class counter-terrorism strategies by the NSG and a third-class court system, in which the 1993 accused for the Mumbai blasts have yet to be convicted and their appeals are still in process. Unless we get that kind of a society, it is all a matter of great distress.

Ultimately prosecute lawyers terrorists defend normal procedure How can you fight terrorism in this way?
Sir I am very distressed to report this. all necessary steps have to be taken to gather about these intelligence business. But your own paragraph shows the condition of the intelligence agencies. And worse than that is, as you know, that the civil war which has broken out in the intelligence agencies is in the
Press. Every single day, some agency is feeding information This shows the condition to which intelligence agencies have been brought. But the fact of the matter is that for a country of 1.2 billion people, facing all these threats and actual executions, do you know the operational strength of IB on the field gathering intelligence? It is 3,500 persons. How can you monitor this? And, Sir, the worst thing is but till today the Government has not been able to explain why they have not acted on the recommendations that were
made by the Girish Chandra Saxena Task Force on Intelligence. Sir, various agencies were set up. The multi-agency centre was set up; the National Intelligence Data base was set up; the joint Task Force on Intelligence was set up under the same IB and they remained on paper.

Sir, seven years after these agencies were set up nominally, as new agencies are going to be set up, they remain, to my personal knowledge, merely ‘paper’ organisations. That is why, Sir, I will conclude with my one appeal.
The entire country is with you when you take effective steps. But there has been gross neglect, there has been gross reversal which is evident in many of the things that have happened; and if you act — Buddha’s phrase was ‘with the urgency of a man whose hair are on fire’. If you act with that clarity about the war, if you act with unrelenting determination, then, Sir, the entire country is with you. If not, — Mr. Chidambaram will remember — if you fail to do that, this time it will not be only share prices which will go down, but the country would have been let down and would have been exposed to even greater danger than it is in now today because of things that have happened.
Thank you very, very much for your patience.

Loyalty

Loyalty in the modern world is hard to find.Or so say the cynics. After many years of using Bloglines to keep in touch with many articles on many blogs, today i start trying out Google. Bloglines introduced me to the world of blogs and rss. I've never been tempted to sway or consider a path away from her. Alas everybody praises the new girl on the block Google reader and i will consider!

Stupid amerikan kids and intelligent indians ones.

To be part of the South Indian middle class(sim) involves, among other things, a form of chest thumping i call Amerika down down.
It involves various forms of insults, the most common one among middle aged sims is how they love to point out the superiority of Indian kids, especially south Indian, over Amercikan kids.

This hypothesis is proposed every time a South Indian name flashes on the screen of an Amerikan spelling bee telecast or an Indian wins some Intel or NASA scholarship. This incident is followed by self praise, self kudos and self back patting.

"Indians kids are smart and hard working!", "Look at how we are beating them in their own language!". Krishnamurthy and Swamis make up a big portion of students in the finals of spelling bees.But are AmeriKan kids really dumb and their school system so pathetic as my various self-congratulating friends claim? This belief is so prevalent that a large number of Indian parents return to India during the kids formative years(3rd standard till 10th atleast)!

The main argument on side superiority is our superior brain.Proof? Indians invented the 0!But that's for later. Can a group of people really be mentally more gifted? This idea generally flows from the observation of Afrikan/Afrika-American/Jamaican/Ethiopian athletes winning race after race in the various events of the Olympics. So OBVIOUSLY some traits like physical capability in their case and raw brain power in our case are more present in special groups.

Other than a total lack of proof to support the argument, there are sad repercussions of it. Our tough school system is not analyzed deeply enough thanks to this myth. The inferior Amerikan school system supports sports,extra-curriculursand even sex education! yuck!

"Not for US!" say sims.we don't need all that, a child's physical fitness is not the measure of his well being! his ability to know the capitals and flags of over 60 countries is. Can the ability to know the various types of grasslands thorough out the world compensate the skills learnt from taking up a drama or cooking class??? "YES it can!" again the sims.

The pressure an average Indian kid comes under is not only destructive but the following social stigma that s/he faces is something Indian society should be ashamed of. Most of these kids are the exact versions of Chinese gymnasts who are separated from family when young and then trained to perform in an Olympics or maximum another. Nobody knows the mental effects of such gruelling training on the Chinese children.

As for Sim's children, the mental effects are well documented.They become a sim. They force their children to take violin/vedic-maths/karate/abacus-maths/sloka-chanting and other such nonsense. They bask in the glory of their sons and daughters cracking top exams but rue about how children in their good old days were innocent and nice once the children take to drugs and alcohol under these pressures.

Any "superior" performance that an Indian kid delivers should be attributed to nurture and not nature.The Chinese gymnasts are responding to the nurture of a forced regimen of physical training.American kids are responding to the regimen of a comfortable life with little pressure to deliver academically only. They deliver in sports, in theatre and so many fields.Sim children are responding to the regimen of the Sim family. A regimen where a kid is known by his report card only.

My first post-it

Just used my first post-it at office.

lets see what the fuss is all about.

Phone Memories

My phone ran out of memory and I had to delete some contacts to regain space. As I browsed my address list I came across various ppl I will never again contact but who were important to me for brief periods of time. They were fest organizers or rivals or friends or general friendly ppl who were friends for the time the fest lasted or ppl who wanted help or ppl who either became friends on a short bus journey and so on..

names like Aditya BMS, RUdra IIIT, Akash junior, Ananth KIMS, Anirudh Bio, Ankit DC, Ashok Mech, Ashwin IIMb, Bharath Quiz, Divya JNC, Harsha BMS, jayanth IIIT, Mahendra DC, Manish Co-od, Nandini BMS debate, Nazeef RV plays, Nipun RV mech, Preeth Doshi DC, Rahul IIIT, Rishab Debate, RV Chem Ramya, Savitha DC, Sitara Mount Carmel Debate, Vikas Pesit, Abhas Rv debate, Sri ram college Delhi.

Some ppl from Companies who helped out my international debate trips Beena HP, Monica HP, Stic Travels, Sudhaker travels, Anoop Singh, Satish Cognizant, Abraham Cherian HP.

some nameless numbers like Unknown girl!!!, BMS DC, HP, Kp, record??? Think this is someone who took my lab record.

Most of the above have been deleted.

sigh…..

How creativity is being strangled by the law

Great video on Creativity , the internet and THE law.

Colors of the wind

Came across this beautiful song. Wildly touching.



Here is the lyrics.


You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know?
You don't know ...

You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind

You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind